Learn music theory for writing melodies in 20 minutes

one of the key aspect of making a great  track starts with making a great melody as   our melodies are a very powerful  way to facilitate our feelings to   our listeners do you remember  the first time you heard this or maybe this   we are demystifying the melodies today jumping so before we start with all this  theory i want to mention something   music is always about the freedom and i'm giving  all this stereo to you to help you craft your own   universe so don't feel bound by them feel really  free to break them if you feel it's necessary but   in short a melody is linear succession of musical  tones that listeners perceive as a single entity a melody consists of six different elements the  first one is of course the scale basically means   the set of different notes that are ordered  by the fundamental frequency or the pitch   simply put these are the notes that we feel  familiar to use when we are giving base note   for the electronic dance music the common  skills are the major scales and minor scale techno being techno chromatic scales are also  popular in techno music is the distance between   the lowest note in a melody and the highest  note in the middle but we have to consider   two different important aspects when you use a  wider range that tends to create a really dramatic   sound because of that super lows and super highs  being in the same melody take an example of this   short phrase here when the range is really  short it sounds just like a regular melody when we increase the range into two octaves  it gives completely different feeling and the other important thing when it comes to the  range is that the tighter ranges oftentimes much   easier to hum to or sing to and hence they  tend to be more catchier than wider ranges   contour is basically peak changes that are  happening in a melody if you try to draw a line   just go through all the different notes that you  are using it gives you the contour of a melody and depending on how your contour looks like   it will reflect different feelings do you want to  give this uplifting feeling try ascending contours and if you want to release for example a  tension in a track try descending contours contour comes also with the motion motion means  that the dynamic jump from one note to other one   if you want to give a sophisticated feeling to  your melodies you can try to use a dynamic motion   meaning that the ups and downs are quite  often and the mildew feels really dynamic   for example if you want to surprise your  aliens you can try to use the spikes   spikes mean that this sudden jumps in your notes which brings us to the intervals it is basically  the distance between two different notes so the   melodic interval happens when you play two  notes after each other let's say you are   playing from a sixth to fifth a perfect fifth  it will give you this satisfactory feeling but if you go and do other way around fifth to  six it will give you the tension feel like the   melody is not concluded yet and for example  long time watchers on this channel will know   how much i love one five six which is a kind  of defined melodic techno simply because giving   this uneasy melancholic feeling and being  kind of overutilized in this genre as well i know this sounds a bit weird but a melody  has also structures in them like a track having   different structures in it maybe you have  heard that the ea section or the b section   or the c section of a melody and sections  in melodies are used to keep consistency   while changing or evolving the melody during  track for example you may start with the abc   at the beginning of the track and recycle  the first part of the melody a section   and then use the c section instead of b and go  b and then go back to a again and then finally   maybe you can when you are reaching the highest  point of the track you change the melody to the b   cc and this slow change and evolution in the  melody makes the melody more interesting while   keeping the consistency and making everything a  bit more glued in the melody itself and finally   this is actually not something you would find  in the classic melody theory but it is what i   call a color and the tonality as we are making  electronic dance music the song design itself and   how it is pronunciated is really important and  change the character of the melody completely so you have to be really careful about this  newer side of creating melodies it's really   really extremely important for making dance music  and once we know the cells of a melody we will   take one step further because not everything  is melody and it's important to understand   those different concepts when you're thinking  about the melodies in your track they're actually   more than three but i simplify them again one  step further and i call them three siblings   and these are the motives phrases and melodies so  first of all the concept of motives phrases and   melodies open to interpretation and interpretation  really changes in different genres people again   look at this from the electronic dance music  perspective as usual so the first one is the   motives you can consider this as a shortest idea  that can be detectable by the listeners you often   see this distinctive pitch and rhythm combination  and they tend to intellect electron dance music at   least at two to five knots i will say they are  pretty short i will use the analogy here let's   take a look at the sentence we make music because  we love music here v and music is short is just a   word but it's a very distinctive v is v but make  for example requires something to it so make   what so it's not really that distinctive  and obvious and if you go back to the for   example music music is music it doesn't need  anything else and if you take an example from   the melody for example the music here let's create  a super short idea that has an identical content   when it comes to phrases this is really important  to mention because phrases could be actually   longer than the melodies in the classical music  theory but when it comes to the electronic dance   music i really think them as like the shorter  version of the melodies and they express a   definitive melodic idea so like melody is often  made up of phrases but oftentimes you need more   than one phrase to complete the melody and if  you take a look at our sentence again we make   music so it definitely creates an idea but then we  have because we love music to complete our melody   so it needs something else to make a full mail  to full story and if we go back to music again   so let's take this one step further and  try to express a melodic idea that we can   develop upon later in our melody so  we will go for something like this so here we feel like a closure a clean idea as we are going to develop  this and build upon a melody and finally it comes back to the melody the main  idea the main difference is with the melodies like   when we have a melody do our listeners will  think it as a single entity and we won't need   anything else it's like a short summary of  the track and that's why they are oftentimes   really really important because you want the  summary of your track really good so we take   one step back and take a look at appleton this  is our motive this is our phrase and from there   i use the motive and phrase together and add a  bit of variation like this ending up this melody so the first menu type that we are looking for is  the lead melodies and these are probably the most   important for many people main characteristics  of this type of sounds are they tend to utilize   a bigger range and they tend to evolve during  the track they may have a more complex contour   they include more motion and they can  even include more motifs but these are   really dependent on the genre in one genre that  could be completely different to other genres so   here the boundaries are not that clear i  would say so we have this loop over here so we need a lead meter right here so if  you think about theory we need something   dramatic so we want range we don't want  something super complex because we want   it catchy it isn't this is techno we  don't care about the scale because   this is techno and of course we care about  the sound itself i have a preset like this very aggressive very rich perfect for  techno sound so id is basic here right   we want to utilize a bit larger range so something like this we want a less contour  because we want something a bit more   catchy so let's stay around here but we  want our range to make it dramatic so   as you can see i really don't care about the scale  at all because i want this really weird dissonance   in the sound to make it even more technoid  so let's go for something like this right let's play together with  track and see how it sounds isn't this just perfect if you enjoyed the video  please consider liking the video and subscribing   to channel it helps a ton it keeps motivated so  i can make more videos like this in the future   and maybe even more important for you is that  at 100k we will making a remix challenge from a   famous producer and of course there will be  hardware and software giveaways to just to   celebrate 100k but let's go back now one thing  i would like to really point out that the menu   of this doesn't even need to be single notes it  could be also a chord progression in this case   i have this small chord progression you can even  argue if this is a melody or if it is actually a   phrase but i would go for a melody because it  is the only thing that is used in this track this is a very typical thing especially  in driving main room techno tracks   and if you play together with  the loop sounds like this   so we have another loop  here this time is from prida all right what is the first thing that comes into  your mind when we say pruida i would say really   strong beat together with very catchy melodies  hence from our theory what do you remember about   catchy melodies or catch elite sound first i  will say our range will be short we will avoid   really dynamic motion we will keep the contour  smooth and simple get an interval that everybody   knows and use a nice preset that reflects the  original preview sound it's something like this here we already catching up this videos out  but to make it more obvious and expressive   we need that phrase meaning that we  can clearly hear the idea here so right here we definitely feel like the zapruder  sound it is there but it's not complete   we we definitely understand the idea but  if he doesn't feel like this completeness   with the melody take a look one more time  what happens when i just finished the melody right here now we feel much more complete again  you feel like it's not 100 complete because   this is a looping method so the main purpose of  this like never really hundred percent finishing   the melody so that we can always come listen  again and again and again but it's much more   clear melody compared the phrase  one more time if i play faster right here this beautiful preda melody and  if you play this together with the track this brings us to back melodies so and the  second type of melody is the big melodies   as they are they are sitting in the background  they tend to be not that dramatic so they   are simpler they utilize less contour less  range less variation and less motion as well   again you don't want them to take over your  track main purpose is basically filling up the   track so the making the ambient stronger  and sometimes this can even emphasize a   specific emotion with the main melody so  they can act like an auxiliary melody i   would say and prove the example here is a very  perfect example of auxiliary background melody   this mode is repeating itself  quite a bit during the track but   at some part there's a black mullet coming in  and completing even more this main middle sound   i'm not gonna play it one more time because it's  the same ideas all over i just kind of scroll to   this part of the track the main difference between  back mode and main melody in this case is just   the melodies i'm mainly ascending so  that is creating this kind of uplifting   feel in the chorus of the track basically that's  the main purpose of this melody take a listen   fit play together with the track  now all makes much more sense so let's take a look at a bit  closer to this background thing   i have another example so i have this  small brick right here but i need the   enhanced ambience and i want to use a  big military do that sounding like this so what we can do we want something simple  remember back melody we don't go for too much   contour we don't need something super complicated  the main focus is enhancing the ambience isn't this beautiful so if you play together and  try this out almost feels like we can add another   background sound here just to enhance to beginning  of the drop again or the beginning of the rhythm   again remember what we did in the techno track  creating this kind of not following the rules it was something like this and we're gonna use  the same idea but this time you go something a bit   less tension or a bit less dramatic something like  this so let's try one more time to get the track   isn't that just so beautiful so when you use  the background mode is right in the places   they can make huge differences  let's do it one more time let me show you one another thing all right  when we think about the background mode we   don't need to always think about the main  melodies we can even consider the bass sound   and used as our background melody so we  have a synth wave track sounding like this so the question here is wouldn't it be  really beautiful if you change the bass   and have some type of background mail to enhance  the ambience a little bit so i'm thinking like   something like this like the main original  mode goes like this it's always the same what about if we move around a bit right and then then the song have kind of a chord  progression style i also in kind of a melody   and on top of that let's make it a dramatic  but make something a bit more dramatic   giving a bit range and having a kind  of a fast jump to another high sound that tendon gives really  this emphasis on the drama   and let's play together with  the track and see if this fits and the final one is fx melody or the color  melody there is no rule here the main purpose   is just creating some kind of a sound on the  background that feels the space and enhanced   ambience you can do whatever you want to do as  long as it fits the track i have a loop like this you know what would be nice here at real melodies   in the background filling the  space i have a preset already very pushed pushback a lot of effects the laser  verbs whatever on it making it really a trail so or maybe something like this   these type of menus are really hard to  play in the real time because they're   held off fx so i'm just gonna let it  play and show you the notes instead i think it makes it super obvious  why these are called color melodies

Channel: Alice Yalcin Efe - Mercurial Tones Academy

Views: 56,109

Keywords: ABLETON LIVE 10, music production, edm production, how to, how to make, ableton, ableton live, techno production, how to techno, how to edm, audio mixing, mastering, ableton live 11, how to make music, music theory, making melody, how to make melody, how to make edm melody, chord progressions, writing melodies, fl studio, how to write a melody, fl studio beat making, learn music theory, music theory 101, music education, music theory lessons, beginner music theory

Id: 5iIhGCyuOPU

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021